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WAS LINCOLN WRONG TO KEEP THE SOUTH IN THE UNION?

Question: Who'd be president today if Lincoln hadn't kept the union together? It wouldn't be Bush (ie, someone from Texas, because Texas wouldn't be part of America.

Who'd be national security advisor if Lincoln hadn't kept America together? It wouldn't be a woman born in Georgia or Alabama (or whereve Condie's from) --- and, in any event, a black woman born down there wouldn't be eligible for high office even in the confederacy)

Who would be on the Supreme Court if Lincoln hadn't succeeded? Not Clarence Thomas, son of Georgia - because Georgia wouldn't be part of America (and Thomas of course wouldn't be doing anything similar in the confederate nation, because he's black)

All you folks who are glad the South - and honorable southerners - are part of our union today, really should think twice when you suggest Lincoln was wrong to try to keep the South in the Union.

All you folks who are glad the South - and honorable southerners - are part of our union today, really should think twice when you suggest Lincoln was wrong to try to keep the South in the Union.

To make a judgment on the validity of Lincoln's actions strictly out of hindsight is absurd. Actions should be judged on their internal merits or lack thereof, and Lincoln's actions were severely lacking in merit.

And you are ignoring the possibility the South would have subsequently entered into a trade or other form of federation with the North once slavery was abolished in the South. Or are you suggesting there would have been a slave-owning South into the 20th century?

What about the rest of the Americas? Slavery was commonplace, and it ended everywhere, usually without the toll the Civil War took on the U.S.

You can imagine a lot about any outcome, and scenarios without a Civil War very plausibly might have had better outcomes.

Question: Who'd be president today if Lincoln hadn't kept the union together? It wouldn't be Bush (ie, someone from Texas, because Texas wouldn't be part of America.

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It's pure speculation to try to second guess what America would be like if Lincoln had not forced the south back into the union.

Many economists agree that slavery was well on it's way into the dustbin of history at the start of the Civil War. Whether you call them slaves or "proletarians in worker's paradise," slavery is still unsustainable, as the Communists have learned.

After a few years, most likely the Confederate states could have rejoined the union after coming to an agreement on their issues. Slavery was never an issue until Lincoln tried to hitch his wagon to the abolitionist movement in order to support his failing war efforts.

If I recall my history correctly, the anti-conscription protests escalated into civil strife that killed around 1,000 people in New York City.

I have been meaning to read L. Neil Smith's "The Probability Broach." He wrote a what-if book based on this topic. Perhaps I should head to the library tomorrow...

All you folks who are glad the South - and honorable southerners - are part of our union today, really should think twice when you suggest Lincoln was wrong to try to keep the South in the Union.

Warning of unacceptable consequences is a form of appeal to motive in lieu of support -- and here it is also offered in the form of a fallacy of distraction as well: the famous slippery slope.

Your argument is also another form of the fallacy of distraction, and that's the argument from ignorance, that since we don't know that the consequences of a Southern victory in the WBTS would have been good, then therefore we must say that almost certainly they would have been bad. None of these propositions is demonstrably so.

When South Carolina's triggering bombardment of an improperly "federal" island fort after its Union commander refused to surrender upon S.C.'s departure from the Union, Lincoln led the War of Northern Aggression against the southern states which had retained the natural right of secession. Some three score and ten years before, southern states would not have joined with the northern states in the first constitutional republic otherwise.

The mixed evils of slavery and repeated armed invasion and blockade with eventual total war against Confederate civilians make our first Civil War a morally conflicted, bloody trajedy. Lincoln's war ruined lives of millions, forever changing our view of government's might-makes-right police powers, despite our Constitutional limits of the powers of government with our liberties protected by the 10 Articles of our Bill of Rights.

We cannot impose 21st Century perspectives on lives of six generations ago. Slavery was a failing economic system; in the north, submarginal wages for throw away labor was cheaper than the total support cost for slaves. NIMBY northern racism continues to this day so the southern sin against negroes was not just southern.

Through the killing powers of the Union, Lincoln forced the "right" of the State over the liberties of millions.

No one was killed at Ft. Sumter in April 1861, however victors write histories.

IMO, Lincoln deserved to have been killed for his unConstitutional tryanny.